Submissions/Why Women Don't Post

This is a rejected submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no.

125

Title of the submission: Why Women Don't Post

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation): Presentation or Workshop

Author of the submission: Selam Daniel

E-mail address: selam.daniel@gmail.com

Username: selamd

Country of origin: Eritrea/USA

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.): N/A

Personal homepage or blog: N/A

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal): The reasons why women tend not to post on Wikipedia are tied to the reasons why women are also less likely to raise their hands in college courses, champion their ideas at work, and self-identify as an expert in any field.

The premise of this presentation is that we can encourage more women to post information on Wikipedia if we can untangle why women aren't doing it now, and create an environment (including the culture, the policies, and even the design) that encourages them to do so.

The first part of the presentation will focus on lifelong conditioning and the conscious and subconscious forces that affect a woman's choice to post content on a site like wikipedia. We will start by examining the games and rewards that girls learn as children and then quickly move into how these messages are reinforced as adults. The takeaway from this first section will be that there are multiple forces that lead a woman to not self-identify as an "expert" and therefore not post content. The conversation will be lighthearted and fun, but still poignant.

The second part of the presentation will focus on how we can take our understanding of why women are not posting and turn these insights into strategies to create an environment where women do post content on the site. We'll discuss the culture of the site, the policies, and the design.

The key takeaways of the session will be of relevance to the wikimedia community, but are universal enough to be useful for other academic, cultural, social, and business applications.

Track: * WikiCulture and Community; Research, Analysis, and Education

Length of presentation/talk: 25 Minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: No

Slides or further information (optional): N/A

Special request as to time of presentations

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with four tildes. (~~~~).

--Lpagola (talk) 17:20, 17 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 19:50, 18 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Sj (talk) 00:53, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Valid entry (talk) 02:10, 22 March 2012 (UTC) if it doesn't collide with my presentation time[reply]
--1Veertje (talk) 21:07, 25 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Graham87 (talk) 11:27, 31 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]